


Fifteen Minutes to Leave (Princess Carolyn’s Best Day Ever)

by zorotokon



Category: BoJack Horseman
Genre: Children, F/M, Marriage, dream - Freeform, everything is perfect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:10:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12664278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorotokon/pseuds/zorotokon
Summary: Princess Carolyn wakes up one day to discover that, just once, maybe everything can go right.





	Fifteen Minutes to Leave (Princess Carolyn’s Best Day Ever)

Princess Carolyn drifted back into consciousness like an unmanned ship sloughs onto a sand back. First slowing to a still, then rolling to the side. Her hand sunk into the warm depression left by Ralph, and her shoulders eased what little tension remained for a very restful night. It was minutes of calm blinking and pushing her shoulders into her plush pillow top before she finally did rouse herself, her phone blessedly quiet as she went through the business of the morning.

“Coffee, dear?” Ralph was already up and dressed, the mouse bustling around the kitchen like it was Thanksgiving and he had forgotten to defrost the bird.

Carolyn yawned and stretched, smirking to herself when his eyes followed her partially transparent nighty. “Maybe just a juice, and some loving,” she caught his approach in her hands and guided him to her lips, where they shared the first part of a balanced breakfast.

“You know, Ralph, I feel good about today. Like everything’s going to be just fine,” she said as he finally turned away.

“Yeah? Just got a feeling?”

“Just got a feeling,” she sat at the table as he laid out French toast, poached eggs, and a big glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. It was all perfect. “I think you deserve some loving too, after this meal.”

“Okay, honey, I love you, but this boyfriend has to get to work!” He extracted himself from her arms as playfully as he could, and ran out the door.

Carolyn sighed happily into her juice as she lazed at the table. Work could have waited the thirty minutes for Ralph and her to slip back into bed, but sometimes the anticipation of something was better than the thing itself.

She brushed her teeth, combed her fur, and slipped into her favorite green skirt and matching top, completing the ensemble with a golden triangle set with a single ruby, a family heirloom.

_Beep!_

Main Street was empty when she finally got herself out of the house. She hit greens on Polka, Darcy, and Mayesville, and it seemed like a blink before she was outside her office. She slid into her normal spot and popped out to an unexpectedly quiet garage. She took a big breath of morning air, and even the carpark smelled fresh today, rather than just of fresh urine.

“Princess Carolyn,” the voice came from behind her, and appropriately ran along her spine like a rusty meat hook.

“Vanessa Gecko,” Carolyn wore carefully composed cheer as she turned to face her rival. Her smile nearly broke into a fit of giggles when she saw the manager was shoeless and her usually perfect blue pencil dress was torn to shreds and splattered with motor oil. “Oh you look terrible, dear, what happened?”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a spare buss fifteen on you right now, would you?” Vanessa was standing by her car, a beat up old Coyota that was more rust than drab flaking paint. Carolyn couldn’t remember why Vanessa was driving it, but it suited her perfectly. What really made Carolyn’s grin stretch was the smoke billowing from the hood, and the trunk.

“Sorry, Vanessa, but I couldn’t even tell you which way was up on an engine.” Carolyn’s face was frozen. Of course she had a dozen extra fuses in her box, but she’d be damned if she’d gave Vanessa even one. “Tell you what, though, there’s a Yippy Lube just around the corner, I’m sure they can help you.”

“Just around the corner?” Vanessa gave Carolyn a suspicious glare, which the cat was more than happy to return with a flowery flutter of eyelash.

“Oh yes, just follow Broadway, it’s very close.” Vanessa sized Carolyn up for another tense second, before finally deflating.

“Thanks much. I’m already super late to a really important meeting, and I’d lose my job if I didn’t make it!”

“How terrible,” Carolyn waved to Vanessa’s back as she stumbled out of the garage. She had spoken true, there was a Yippy Lube on Broadway, but it was seven blocks away, and would still be closed when she did get there. The elevator doors popped open immediately when she hit the button, and her ascent was uninterrupted by other passengers. She practically sauntered into her office, slamming herself down into her chair. She spun once for good luck, and then once more just because.

She rolled her neck, flipped on her computer, and pressed the intercom to yell at her incompetent nimrod of an assistant.

“Stuart, I want BoJack Horseman on line one now!” The phone practically leapt to her hand as Stuart did his first piece of work since she had hired him.

It rung only once before the familiar voice of her least favorite horse spewed its usual drivel at her: “Bo for GoJack! What’d you think of that, did it work? Too complicated? Okay, yeah, it doesn’t make sense in a bubble.”

“BoJack, forget Secretariat! I’ve got the role of a lifetime for you, and this is the big one. So you better not mess this up again, you got me?”

“I’ve got you, PC,” BoJack actually sounded sober, which meant a blue moon was passing overhead, or he had lost his card on his last bender and his favorite bar wouldn’t give him any more credit..

“Good, because I’ve got Spielberg wanting to make a trilogy about the Vietnam Wa-”

“I’ll do it.”

“Wait, I didn’t even tell you who you’re playing.”

“I’m coming in.”

“What?”

BoJack Horseman almost burst through the door, strutting towards her desk clad in his typical sweater and jeans, although they both lacked the usual vomit stains. “Where’s the paperwork, Carolyn? I’m ready to make you some money!”

“I, um,” Princess Carolyn pulled out her bottom drawer for something to do. She didn’t even keep contracts in there, but if she could distract BoJack for just long enough to get her assistant- Wait. “Actually, I have it right here, in the drawer where I usually keep my whiskey.”

“Fantastic! Let me just sign here, here, here, and initial here, and here, and boom! Business! Making movies! BoJack out!”

The world seemed to suck in a sharp breath as the horse almost disappeared, only to be replaced by her assistant. “Stuart, what are you doing here?”

“Um, well, I was being incompetent and lazy as per usual.”

“Yes, but tell me something I don’t know.”

“And, well, I dropped your schedule in the paper shredder and dipped my tie in your coffee, and I also already forgot what I came in here for.”

If it hadn’t been for her elbow locked below it, Princess Carolyn’s face would have smashed into her desk so hard she would have dislocated a retina. “Thank you for the update, is there anything else?”

“Oh, yeah, there’s a guy here wanting to talk to you about replacing me.”

“Send him in!”

_Beep!_

“Hello Miss Carolyn,” Judah was standing in her office, the evening sun blazing across his suit, but too low to catch his face.

“Judah? I fired you.”

“You are correct, you did fire Judah, but I am Jonah, his identical twin brother.”

“…Oh, and you are here because?” she prompted.

“While my brother was efficient, punctual, and polite to a fault, not to mention the best assistant you’ve ever had, he went over your head at a key time in your life when you felt everyone was betraying you.”

“So much for brotherly love,” she muttered.

“The main difference between us is that I am superior in every way.”

Her eyebrows went up at such a bold statement. “Well, if you can staple two pieces of paper together without also hitting a major artery, than you’re better than the blockhead I have now.” She leaned back in her chair, templing her fingers to observe the almost perfect replica of her former assistant. She made a decision.

“Let me just, oh damnit, Judah used to do all my hiring for me.” Princess Carolyn stroked her chin, “say, how about we start the interview now? If you had to hire someone, what questions would you ask?”

“I would start with requesting a copy of their credentials and experience, which they should provide on a printed resume no longer than two pages.” Jonah handed her such a paper. The starlight only partially illuminated it, making Carolyn squint. “As you can see I have excellent references at many top agencies across the world.”

“Hold on a moment, this says you’re thirty five, but have over seventy years of experience?”

“I worked at two agencies concurrently, giving me an eighty hour work week, and twice the experience of a normal man.”

“That seems like not how numbers work, but okay!” Princess Carolyn let Jonah’s resume fall to her desk, where it was framed by the harsh morning glare off the steel girders of the adjacent building. “So, if you were my assistant, how would you start my day?”

“Traditionally you like your mornings to begin with a mocha latte with extra cream, a pinch of cinnamon on top of the foam, two packets of sugar, and three shots of baileys that you don’t watch being added so you can pretend that it’s just half a shot for the taste.” He handed her the prepared drink, it was perfect.

“Okay, Judah probably told you about that one, so it’s a gimme. What’s next?”

“I would read you your schedule for the day, which I have here.” He flipped the top page of the clipboard he was holding over, and frowned. “Hmm, unfortunately that will have to wait as you are already late for a very important appointment.”

“Wait, what? What is it?”

“It says ‘A very important date with my husband,’ ma’am.”

“But, why would I write that?”

_Beep!_

“Because that’s what we’re doing right now?”

Carolyn was sitting in her favorite Italian restaurant. Across from her, her favorite husband, Ralph, smiled and gestured hugely. His favorite green suit appeared motley in the low light of their hidden get-away. In front of her was a half-eaten plate of spaghetti flanked by the bread bowl and a mostly drunk glass of wine. She was holding a fork, and on it was a meatball. She took a nibble, it was perfect. She set down the food and took an experimental sip of the wine. It too was perfect.

“More _Chateau Calle_ , honey? I know it’s your favorite.” Ralph held the bottle tantalizingly close to her glass, the red liquid inside sloshing in slow motion like he was pouring treacle.

“Yes, please,” she watched him fill up her glass, then his own, then the bottle refill itself from the bottom up. “Dear, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, Carolyn, anything for you.”

“I don’t want to ruin the mood, but,” she crushed the napkin in her hands and looked away, the rest of the restaurant was blurry, the shapes of the other patrons frozen in a haze. “Didn’t we break up?”

“Sure we did!” She felt like her heart had been tied to an anvil and tossed off a boat. “But why let a little detail like that end such a great dream?”

“Dream? I’m dreaming?”

“Of course you are, and now that you’ve noticed,” he gave her an exaggerated wink.

“I can do anything?” she put her hand in the middle of the table. He reached out and squeezed it tight, pulling her up and up, and into the clear sky of dusk. Puffs of purple and orange played at the edge of her vision, while Hollywoo spread beneath her like a glittering constellation. A sudden rush of air pushed her fur flat, and her lungs filled with cold as her face couldn’t help but break into a wide, mad smile.

“Where are we going?” She yelled.

“Wherever you want!” He was pulling her by the hand ever forward as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, tinging the sky blue as they rushed to a quiet house in the hills, far away from the city.

_Beep!_

She was in the dining room of that house, no _her_ house. This was her dining room, and that was the table she had always wanted, stark and real, not even behind the window of the antique store. The china set was her china set, and it was the real stuff, the stuff her own mother never could afford, but always dreamed about having.

She counted the plates, four in a square, and a fifth plastic orange plate in front of a high chair.

“The lasagna is almost ready,” Ralph called from the kitchen. He was wearing a gingham apron and oven mitts printed with cat’s paws. He gave her a quick peck on the cheek before taking them off to pull her into an embrace. He only half released her, keeping a hand looped around her back to rub her arm.

“This is, just,” she couldn’t find the words.

“Here, my dear,” Ralph handed her a family photo.

“She looks just like me!” It was practically a squeal, “and he looks just like you! And the little one! It’s Ruthie, and Philbert, and, and, what’s his name? What’s my baby’s name?”

“I don’t know, dear,” he took the frame back, smiling wistfully as he started to fade.

“Ralph? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know, dear,” he sounded like he was shouting through a door, and the words echoed from all around as Princess Carolyn twisted and turned in the encroaching darkness.

_Beep! Beep! Beep!_

Princess Carolyn shot up, pulling off her sleeping mask with such force that the elastic snapped in two, stinging her hand.

“Ralph! I just had the most incredible dream, we had- oh, right.”

She was in her old apartment, the one she never got rid of. It was five in the morning, and if she was going to beat traffic, she had fifteen minutes to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> ♪ Back in the nineties I was in a very famous TV show ♪  
> This entire fic was spawned based on the comment: “I want to write a happy Princess Carolyn fic, but it’s so out of character.”


End file.
